In recent years, attention has been focused on plasma display panels and liquid crystal display panels, as display devices suitable for reduction in thickness and upsizing. These display panels (hereinafter, referred to as “panels”) are constituted by two flat-plate shaped glass substrates attached to each other through a bonding material with a desired spacing provided therebetween, wherein these glass substrates have display element components such as electrodes, dielectric materials, ribs, light emission components and color filters which are held thereon.
On the other hand, conventionally, defective components created during panel fabrication processing and sold panels which have been used have been subjected to disposal processing such as landfills. However, regeneration and reuse of panels have been social challenges, due to an increase of public opinions for global environmental protection, such as effective utilization, regeneration, reuse and saving of resources, as well as a lack of landfill grounds.
In view of the aforementioned circumstances, there have been increasingly stepped up developments for reuse of glass plates, which are main components of panels. In order to reuse glass plates, it is necessary to cut the attached portions of the glass plates attached to each other for separating the two glass plates from each other, in order to remove the display element components on the glass plates. At present, such disassembling operations have been manually performed using tools such as glass cutting cutters or vibration cutters. Further, there are techniques for cutting glass plates, as disclosed in the following Patent Documents.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-050295
Patent Document 2: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 6-48755
Patent Document 3: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-302264